


This earth of majesty

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Richard II - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Angst, Earthbending & Earthbenders, M/M, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 20:30:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17773736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: The land recognizes its ruler, and gives him full sway. So, although all of Richard’s uncles and cousins may secretly conspire against him, he knows and they know and everyone knows that he is the king, and it is just. They know because he has only to speak to the ground, and it will move for him. The rocks tremble or lift themselves; vines grow faster and trees flourish or wilt at his command.(Henry, though, is unimpressed.)





	This earth of majesty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reine_des_corbeaux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/gifts).



The land recognizes its ruler, and gives him full sway. So, although all of Richard’s uncles and cousins may secretly conspire against him, and whispers may spread that he is a weak king, self-centered and frivolous, he knows and they know and everyone knows that he is the king, and it is just. They know because he has only to speak to the ground, and it will move for him. The rocks tremble or lift themselves; vines grow faster and trees flourish or wilt at his command.

It is his greatest amusement to speak to the land. To bid the plants grow thicker, or in strange, extravagant shapes. Frivolous, yes, they all say so, but he is the king and it is his pleasure. And his right.

Henry, when he waits on Richard, which is not as often as Richard would like, is not very amused with these displays. He does say they are impressive, but in a tone that suggests he is not, actually impressed. Richard wishes he could just be more like his father or like Aumerle or Bagot or Bushy or Green, less judgmental and more… well, more like a subject ought to be. He is young, isn’t he? Well then, what right does he have to act like an old, wizened grandfather—as if he is one of the crowd who talks about the land’s magic supposedly waning, about how the land’s magic used to be stronger and better and more and it’s somehow Richard’s fault that it isn’t so anymore.

Richard cannot impress him, but he still rules him, hard as it seems to be for Henry to remember that. When they kiss in the garden, he makes the ground collapse under Henry’s feet, sending him down onto his knees.

Henry suppresses a dirty look and says, “If your Majesty wanted me to kneel, you had only to command.”

“So I did command,” Richard says, “the earth, and the grass. But for you, since you are so dear to me, I will only request.”

Of course Henry always acquiesces. There are commands behind requests; a king’s words hold weight no matter how they are phrased. And he is eager, too. Richard likes to think that he commands Henry’s flesh and blood as much as his loyalty; he is part of the land, after all.

* * *

 

But Henry is trouble, and trouble had to be dealt with. Still, he could not bear to send Henry away from the land, away from his grasp, for ten whole years. “Six,” he says, repealing his punishment by half on the slightest excuse. “In six years you may return.” And stand on Richard’s land again.

He likes to think that Henry’s resentful face is because he will miss Richard, because he craves his land, his king.

Maybe he wouldn’t have waited the full six years—the land feels emptier with Henry gone. Somehow, Richard feels that his powers are waning, more than even before. He wards himself against whispers; he performs less displays in public. They will say it is his wicked injustice which weakens him, as if his judgment _could_ even be unjust. And the truth is worse—that he feels weak without Henry by his side, that he feels less of a grasp on the very earth itself. He is beginning to realize that Henry commanded his flesh and blood as much as vice versa, and that’s…

It’s unacceptable.

When he seizes Henry’s lands, his inheritance, he does it with a sort of hunger. The legal possession of them does nothing to satisfy or strengthen him, so he pretends it is only a tactical maneuver, only a matter of wealth, only the fight against Ireland, that concerns him.

And in Ireland he convinces himself that it is only his absence from English soil which weakens him, after all. Distance is all that chafes at his relationship with its earth. All will be well when he returns.

(John Gaunt’s voice echoes in his ears, taunts and warnings of how he fails his land and how it will fail him. Thomas Mowbray, he remembers, said something similar before he was banished… but what, exactly, he cannot recall.)

* * *

 

When he returns to England, he embraces the ground. Sits down on the beach and feels the sand against his body. Always before, he has felt it pulse against him like a heartbeat, a steady strain, a recognition of relationship. Today, though…

He can see Aumerle and his soldiers looking down at him expectantly, so he pushes his power into the earth. It quakes, but only ever so slightly. He stifles his worry and asks about the progress of the revolt. Henry, Henry, Henry… he who made the land warm and vibrant for Richard now calls its allegiances to himself. And worse. The Earl of Salisbury tells him that Henry has been seen moving the earth itself.

“It must be some magician’s trick,” Richard says. “He is a practical man, Bolingbroke. But he is not king, and the ground obeys the king.”

“Milord,” Scroop says, “he has been seen to raise stone and cause the trees to uproot themselves and walk. For this reason most of our men have abandoned us—they believe the king is the one who holds the power of the land.”

Richard quakes with anger more fiercely than the slow-responding earth. He calls out to the nearest trees, and asks them to walk too, a testament to his skill. There is only a rustling in the branches.

He groans. “Was ever king so betrayed as I? Now even the land proves Judas. One would think the earth’s deep magics, at least, would remember the truth of who is king!”

The men all exchange looks that he can’t read. He knows they find him pitiful, but they are sympathetic. He sits and digs his hands into the earth for a while. He speaks to it, begging it to remember its loyalty to him. It shifts under him, ever so slightly, but when he thinks of the demonstrations he used to make for holidays, he moans and moans. Must it betray him in his hour of need? That it should fail him now, and not before…

(it has been betraying him, failing him, for some time, but he will ignore that.)

The Bishop of Carlisle, at least, is loyal. So Richard is given refuge. The stones of the castle here still pulse in rhythm with his heart, but faintly, ever so faintly.

* * *

 

He cannot hide there for long, though. His connection to the earth grows weaker and weaker every day, and it adds more to his terror than any reports of battle. Yet the lost battles are what make the difference, he supposes—and then he is summoned—he, the king, summoned—to stand before Henry again. The first time they have seen each other in so long.

And he is in terror, truly, of what he will see. That Henry will show the powers everyone speaks of with such awe, that everyone says are stronger than Richard’s ever were. That he will show his might and gloat in Richard’s face.

Henry is too kind, when he sees Richard; aye, too kind by half. He dares to kneel. When Richard sees that knee kiss the earth, he cannot help but laugh a little, because he feels the tremors that spread when it hits.

“You need not kneel to me, cousin,” he says.

Henry eyes him. They both are thinking of other times Henry knelt—but in front of all these people, what can they say of that? Of this piece of irony, which is so splendid—Henry kneeling owns this earth far more than Richard, though he stands.

Henry says he only wants his lands back. Richard says this is reasonable, certainly. They both know Henry has already taken more lands than ever he inherited. And so things have fallen, and so they will stand—but Henry does not insist on hashing it all out now, and for that, Richard is grateful.

He expects, in the days that follow, some show of Henry’s strength. But Henry does not show off, not in front of Richard, at least. He does not command boulders to serve as Richard’s sentinels. He does not move the earth to trip Richard up, nor shrivel the grass under his feet during their travel back to London. Even when he calls upon Richard to give up the crown, and Richard laments his cruelty and the cruelty of life and the land itself, Henry does not move to prove his own legitimacy. Maybe it is out of pity; maybe it is simply because he knows he does not need to.

There is not a man in England, it seems, who doubts Henry’s right. Even those loyal to Richard, Richard suspects, are loyal out of love and honor, and not because they do not see how the wind is blowing, how the earth has shifted.

* * *

 

When Henry does at last show his power to Richard, it is an act of kindness—maybe. The Tower where Richard is imprisoned is a grim place. When Henry visits, he makes flowers sprout from the floor.

He does this, of course, in full view of the soldiers who guard Richard. None may claim Richard did it, or that his lost powers have returned.

The flowers are simple wildflowers, interwoven with grass—daisies and lilies of the valley and violets. Richard laughs at the gesture. “Do you want me to weave myself a daisy crown, your Majesty? But I thought I was not to wear crowns anymore—no luxuries for me, we said, and yet you throw such luxuries at my feet.”

“It is good to visit the imprisoned,” Henry says brusquely.

He looks at the flowers in annoyance, and it occurs to Richard that he never spoke to the ground to call them up. He says, “Oh, tell me you did not mean to do it. Is your power so great it escapes you in little bursts? You are certainly an unpracticed king. Did my giving you the crown grant you such growth?”

The flowers tangle themselves around Richard’s feet. They are softer than the stone floor, but their grip tightens and chafes oddly, then releases when he pulls away and sits down on his cot.

“You took your time in coming to visit me, cousin.”

“You told me you did not want to be around me.”

“Yet you came anyhow, so one must wonder at the delay. Did the king finally realize that a king may do as he wishes? But, King Harry, I thought that was a lesson you learned long before becoming king—that thou may do as thou wishes.”

Henry just looks at him, and Richard feels he has been scolded. Even the flowers on the floor are hostile to him. Such a small symbol of Henry’s power, yet so utterly Henry’s. They bear him no loyalty, and it is demeaning that Henry offers them.

“You may take your flowers and leave,” he says, “for I am in mourning, as you know, and have no use for color.” Or for this symbol of his land, which has abandoned him.

Henry leaves, but he leaves the flowers behind, and he kisses Richard before leaving, soft and careful on the lips, wordless and restrained. Richard tastes pity there, too, and a hint of the same scolding patience, but he accepts it. He thinks perhaps that through the flowers, Henry means to leave a bit of the land here with him, the land Richard used to own. He is a prosaic man. He may not realize how cruel it is.

**Author's Note:**

> I know nothing about English history but Richard II is a good play so. anyways. LAND MAGIC. I thought it sounded like a really cool idea so I had to give it a shot! I hope you enjoyed :)


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